A man may lie;
he may err. The triangles and the rocks can neither lie nor err. I may
with my own eyes see a certain man do a certain act; he may tell me
himself, or some one else may tell me, that he is the same man who did
some other act; but as to his statement I cannot have absolute
certainty, and no one but myself can have absolute certainty as to the
statement which I make as to the facts which I saw with my own eyes.
Historical evidence may range through every degree, from the barest
likelihood to that undoubted moral certainty on which every man acts
without hesitation in practical affairs. But it cannot get beyond this
last standard. If, then, we are ever to use words like race, family, or
even nation, to denote groups of mankind marked off by any kind of
historical, as distinguished from physical, characteristics, we must be
content to use those words, as we use many other words, without being
able to prove that our use of them is accurate, as mathematicians judge
of accuracy. I cannot be quite sure that William the Conqueror landed at
Pevensey, though I have strong reasons for believing that he did so.
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